Date and Time: Thursday, 30th October, 2025 at 17:00h GMT
Online: Access details below
Venue: Room G21, Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DA
For the opening Greek Dialogue of the new academic year, we are delighted to welcome Dr Andromache Karanika, Lewis-Gibson Visiting Fellow and University of California. Her seminar explores Danaë — an Argive princess of Greek myth, mother of Perseus by Zeus, and in later tradition credited with founding the city of Ardea in Latium during the Bronze Age.
"Danae is a figure marginally present in epic known primarily as one of many in catalogic narration. While the reference to her name in Dios Apate in Iliad 14.319 has captured the story of her encounter with Zeus in the golden shower, her presence as a maternal figure on the chest has also had iconizing effect in classical literature. The figure of Danae has been dramatized by both Sophocles and Euripides, and Sophocles’ reference to her in an Antigone choral ode (944ff) has invited much criticism about the connections between those figures.
This paper traces the testimonia on Danae along with iconographic evidence and situates the evolution of a character critical in revisiting the so-called “high” and “low” genres of performance, from lullaby to lament and wedding song, and how those genres have shaped Greek theatrical performance."
Online Access Details
Topic: Greek Dialogues - From Women’s Catalogues to Dramatis Persona: Exploring the figure of Danae and female “folk” performance in ancient Greek poetry
Date and Time: Thursday 30th October, 2025 17:00h GMT
Join Zoom Meeting: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/88325224388?pwd=NZgmpmSewVO7OUfEPSky1ASaOe9qdE.1
(If you cannot access the seminar by clicking on the link, copy the whole link and paste it into your web browser's address bar.)
Meeting ID: 883 2522 4388
Passcode: 375944
Livestreaming on:
: The Cambridge Centre for Greek Studies Channel
